SOUTH BEND — For Joyce Burnaugh, there could not have been a better place to watch the second inauguration of this country’s first black president.

The South Bend woman was among the 50 or so people gathered Monday at the Indiana University South Bend Civil Rights Heritage Center to watch President Barack Obama’s oath and address on television.

She could hardly contain her excitement as she watched the proceedings in the Natatorium, once off-limits to African Americans like herself.

“I felt like I was right there on the mall watching all the people and seeing all the sights,” Burnaugh said. “Just being here in this place where we were once not welcome and today to be very welcome is a great feeling.

“I feel like history has been made twice.”

The televised ceremony brought delighted onlookers in the Natatorium to their feet several times. But the volume reached a peak when the president took his oath of office.

“It was nice to walk through the front door today,” said Joan Wigfall Thompson, of South Bend.

“I can remember all the hardship blacks faced back in the day when the Natatorium was open, but things are changing. I know that change takes a long time and an event like this has been a longtime coming.

“To be able to watch our president take the oath in this space means a whole lot to a lot of people.” Burnaugh agreed.

“I don’t know about anyone else, but I feel we are healing from all the troubled water that was once here and now it’s clearing it up with today’s celebration,” Burnaugh said.

The event on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday also sponsored by the University of Notre Dame’s Center for Arts & Culture, Ivy Tech Community College’s Office of Student Life and Diversity and IUSB’s Civil Rights Heritage Center.

Muhammad Shabazz, faculty coordinator for the center, said the president’s speech made him proud.

“As a young man trying to make it in society today, every time the president said ‘we’ in his speech it really touched me,” he said. “I feel like he understands our struggles and he is with us. That why we are all here supporting him.” Staff writer May Lee Johnson: mjohnson@sbtinfo.com 574-235-6326